Bob Krasner with one of his photos on display on a LinkNYC kiosk in the East Village.
East Village reporter/photographer has
unique images on display through LinkNYC
BY DEAN JAMIESON
In the past few weeks, pedestrians across New York
City may have stopped and borne the heat, to look
closer at a photo of a building corner, outlined against
the sky, being displayed in one of LinkNYC’s kiosks.
This photo, with its play of color and darkness, and
it’s almost geometric precision and framing, is the work
of Bob Krasner, a New York City-based photographer
reporter who has, for decades, been using the City’s
streets and skies as his personal studio.
“I love it when I’ve managed to take something and
have the subject matter transcend what it actually is”
said Krasner, who freelances for The Villager, a division
of Schneps Media, just feet from one of the kiosks.
“You’ve got these buildings with hard lines and right
angles – and then you’ve got the sun, which is a completely
natural force.”
Through the eye of Krasner’s camera, sights that many
New Yorkers may have become inured to – the cornices
of buildings, steeples, brick walls, blue skies partially
obscured – become suddenly unfamiliar. The effect of
his work is abstract, almost painterly in its precision,
its attention to exact color and composition, and its
estrangement of our assumptions. Looked at closely, in
fact, the photos don’t look like photos at all.
Hailing from Massachusetts, Krasner has been
shooting New York City since the 1980s. His practice
is simple: bring a camera everywhere you go.
“I’m always shooting,” Krasner said. “Sometimes I go
out specifi cally just to shoot, but a lot of times it’s just
the result of me having to meet somebody somewhere,
or having to go to an event.”
That spontaneity is integral to Krasner’s work,
which includes the photographs that can be found in
LinkNYC’s kiosks and on Instagram, at @bobkrasner
and @bobkrasnertoo, as well as on amNY.com and The
Villager.
PHOTO BY DEAN JAMIESON
The road to getting onto the kiosks was a crooked one.
After asking an artist how they got on, Krasner said,
he was told to simply tag LinkNYC on his Instagram
posts, and that, eventually, they would get in touch.
Get in touch they did: Krasner has been on the kiosks
three times, and the current run, which began three
weeks ago, ended on Aug. 17.
His inspirations include Arnold Newman, Ray Metzker,
and Lee Freindler, photographers whose work, even
that taken ‘on the fl y,’ display a very strong sense of
composition.
Jazz and minimalist music, with their poles of freedom
and limitation, play a role, too, so much so that
Krasner says he approaches his compositions musically.
But his work is best summed up by those words of
John Berger, which Krasner quoted to this reporter: that
“seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees.”
Find these photos on the kiosks or his Instagram accounts,
and you will do just that.
22 August 19, 2021 Schneps Media
/amNY.com
